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Stolen 2020 Corvette Was Tracked Down by the Police with Help from OnStar

OnStar is a two-edged sword, there’s no doubt about that. More to the point, every vehicle sold by General Motors in the United States of America comes with the telematics suite, and the automaker’s family of companies may “use and share information when you use vehicles, products, services, websites, infotainment systems, social media sites, and mobile applications for connected vehicle services.”
Stolen C8 Corvette 5 photos
Photo: Tulsa Police Department
Stolen C8 CorvetteStolen C8 CorvetteStolen C8 CorvetteStolen C8 Corvette
Having your vehicle stolen and then immediately located by the police with the help of an OnStar advisor is how General Motors can also play the good guy. Oklahoma's Tulsa Police Department has recently received a phone call over a 2020 Chevrolet Corvette taken in a first-degree burglary, and the fancy software complementing the GPS module is what helped the good guys track down the vehicle.

OnStar’s telematics had also “shut the Corvette off, but when officers ordered the suspect out of the car, it was apparent that the vehicle was still operable when it took off from officers.” If I were to guess why did that happen, the driver might have cloned the key fob or used one of the original keys to start up the car again.

During a short pursuit on the streets of Tulsa, a female passenger bailed out of the C8 while the car was in motion, receiving “some injuries from exiting a moving vehicle. The remaining two occupants drove a little bit further and they bailed out of the car while it was rolling slow.” Yes, there were a total of three suspects in the Corvette and OnStar had shut down the engine remotely for a second time.

The remaining two baddies were arrested after the ‘Vette ground to a halt into a traffic sign, and law enforcement agents have also found weapons in the car that don’t belong to the vehicle owner. At the time the TPD posted about the event on social media, the investigation was still active and the crime scene was processing the evidence.

Looking at the bigger picture, the mid-engine sports car may have been damaged far more without OnStar’s tracking services giving the location of the vehicle to the Tulsa Police Department. Without OnStar and in the absence of surveillance equipment at the owner's residence, the three suspects may have also gotten away scot-free.

OnStar may not be perfect, but you sure need it in this type of event.
 

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Posted by Tulsa Police Department on Friday, November 20, 2020
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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